IRS hearing explodes

Republicans are inching toward a vote to hold former IRS official Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress after fireworks erupted at a House hearing on the tea party targeting on Wednesday.

Lerner, former head of the IRS tax-exempt unit and a lightning rod for Republicans in the nine-month-old scandal, invoked her Fifth Amendment right to refuse to answer self-incriminating questions at a House Oversight and Government Reform hearing — as she did at a May hearing last year.

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Across the Capitol campus, Speaker John Boehner threatened to hold her in contempt if she continues to refuse to testify.

“I’ll wait for a report from [House Oversight] Chairman [Darrell] Issa about what happened and what will happen, but at some point … she has to testify or she should be held in contempt,” the Ohio Republican said at a news conference after a closed party meeting Wednesday.

If the House votes to hold Lerner in contempt, a court could force her to testify. Theoretically, the House could order her to be arrested and detained pending trial, though this power has not been used in recent decades.

The Republican-led House voted in 2012 to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress over his failure to turn over documents related to the Fast and Furious scandal, the first time Congress took such a dramatic move against a sitting Cabinet official.

Boehner’s comments came after the House Oversight panel adjourned a tense hearing with Lerner, where an ugly spat between Issa and ranking Democrat Elijah Cummings (Md.) diverted the spotlight.

Later on Wednesday, Lerner’s lawyer, William Taylor III of Zuckerman Spaeder, shared one of those death threats, currently under FBI investigation, with reporters: “You socialist c—-. We are going to kill you and your f—-ing family.”

Maintaining his client’s innocence, Taylor told reporters that Oversight Republicans lost their shot at hearing from Lerner and now won’t likely hear from her — ever.

Taylor and the committee on Saturday were in conversations about allowing Lerner to testify, without legal immunity, if the panel delayed the hearing by a week. But all bets were off when Issa told “Fox News Sunday” that he was trying to “build a case for why she is at the center of this targeting,” Taylor said.

“This matter has become polarized, and it is completely partisan, and there was no possibility, in my view, that Ms. Lerner would be given a fair opportunity to speak … or to tell the truth,” Taylor said.

Lerner ignited the scandal last May when she acknowledged that IRS workers gave added scrutiny to tea party and conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status. An inspector general report describing the actions came out days later.